From the Farm: Summer Bounty

Lately it feels like we've hit summer's sweet spot. After weeks of harvesting mainly hardy green leafy things, every day now the earth seems to offer up some new pleasure.

Last week we began harvesting our squash and zucchini plants, which seem to replenish our supply every 48 hours or so. We've got our first cukes of the season. The raspberry bushes are beckoning us to weekly scavenging expeditions. The sungold tomatoes in the greenhouse are in high gear, the taut yellow skin yielding juice that tastes like candy. Flowers are blossoming, the herb garden is singing, and the rainbow chard is doing its name proud.

Back home, I got used to wandering into the supermarket more or less any week of the year and buying all of the above. Now, I get it when nature feels like giving it to me. It's decidedly less convenient -- a raspberry cobbler would have been really nice three weeks ago, and really impossible -- but somehow more special too.

In a few weeks we'll start to get our melons and our eggplants and our peppers. They'll have their moments in the sun (and in our mouths) too. And knowing we can enjoy these things only during the short window nature allows makes the experience all the sweeter.